Concerns or not, this seems excessive....

[j. d. worthington]

I've definitely got concerns about home schooling, but am aware there are both pros and cons. No matter how concerned I may be, though, this seems to be more than a little extreme (not to mention thoroughly impractical when it comes to enforcement):

Criminalizing Home Schoolers - Yahoo! News

Title: "Criminalizing Home Schoolers", from TIME, by Kristin Kloberdan, datelined Sat., Mar. 8, 2008.

[Parson]

JD, I have fewer concerns (I believe) than you do about home schooling. I believe that in the overwhelming number of cases that children who are home schooled have superior education. But surprisingly, I'm in the judge's corner with this one on technical basis. He was not ruling against home schools per se, he was ruling that the law as it was written was not being followed. He's probably right about that, and what "The Guv" says, is right. The Legislature is going to have to fix it.

[Teresa Edgerton]

In principle, I like the idea of home schooling, since the schools around here don't do a very good job of teaching and not everyone can afford to send their kids to private school. But going by my own limited experience, what I've seen of it in practice has not been good.

In any case, it doesn't sound like anyone is being "criminalized" out of the blue. The law has been in place all along, and people have been ignoring it.

Every child has a right to a quality education, but it doesn't follow that every parent who wants to home school a child is in a position to provide that education. And a parent's right to decide what is right for his or her child is not absolute. The state does -- and should -- intervene in cases of child abuse. And it seems to me that for a parent to deprive a child of an adequate education is a form of child abuse.

If the law that a parent needs to have a teaching credential is too extreme, it seems to me that the answer would be to change it -- perhaps parents could take some sort of test to show their fitness for the task -- but breaking the law is not the answer.

[Parson]

Teresa,

I agree with what you say, although my limited exposure of home schooling [A couple of families who do, and a couple of adults who were.] would be exactly the opposite of yours.

The rub comes in with the definition of a "quality" education. Does it include mostly the basics? Are co-curriculars necessary, important, or a distraction? How do you value diversity? --- I'm sure you get the picture.

This is a classic case of the interests of the state in balance with the interests of the individual. The state does have a vested interest in seeing that the general population can at least read, write, and do mathematics. But does it have an equal right to demand that a second language be learned, or that evolutionary theory be taught? In the light of this post it would be fair to ask if they have the necessity to see that only credentialed people are in charge of a classroom learning. Or how can you factor the ability to give large blocks of time to each student against a college degree, specialized education classes, and 35 different student every hour?

My own take is that you can not judge an educational program in progress. You can only fairly judge one after the education has been completed and it is seen how well the graduates compete and succeed in the "real" world.

[Teresa Edgerton]

Originally Posted by Parson

My own take is that you can not judge an educational program in progress. You can only fairly judge one after the education has been completed and it is seen how well the graduates compete and succeed in the "real" world.

I think you can judge it if, for instance, the person grading the child's papers for spelling, grammar, etc. is extremely weak in these areas him or herself. If he or she would be unable to successfully complete a written assignment at the elementary school level. How could such a person recognize mistakes in order to correct them? (In case you think this is an exaggeration, this is one of the cases I mentioned.) What if the teacher is equally ignorant in other areas as well? You can't do a good job of teaching what you don't know.

[Delvo]

Most "home school" programs do have educational professionals running them, designing & approving the lesson plans, and grading the work. When my younger sister decided to leave our public high school, she finished and graduated through such a program. They either sent her the textbooks or told her what books to get and where, they sent her other lesson materials of their own making to go along with the books just like a teacher's own lesson outlines or classroom speech, they told her and our parents which stuff she was supposed to do and when, they answered her questions, and she mailed in her papers for grading. If our parents had not been able to serve her needs or she had not been able to keep up herself, the school administrators would have seen it, our parents would have been unable to hide it or deny it, and action (such as getting her back into a physical school building if that was the better solution) could have been taken to respond to the problem. It's really just school at home, as the name indicates.

What some of you seem to be responding to is something else that's often called "un-schooling" for its lack of formality and structure, and is illegal in some (maybe most) states. There are no lesson plans or textbooks and there's nobody with a degree in education grading the kids' papers anywhere. The kids are generally included in the adult world with their parents so they can see for themselves how the world works and what people do and how they do it and how one piece of knowledge fits to another. The things they need to know just come up in real-life situations because human kids are naturally curious if you don't stifle that, so they come to understand the "lesson" in context of what it's really for because it's a part of how things actually work in their experience with the world around them. For example, by the time my oldest nephew was old enough for kindergarten in conventional schools, he was already doing math that isn't taught there until third or fourth grade, because he had seen how people use numbers for grocery shopping and football games and asked about it. For things that are beyond their parents' normal routines, they find out where else to learn more and learn both the info itself and how to get it, such as looking up written material about it (often resulting in research projects that get turned into displays that they share with other "un-schooled" kids and their families at occasional big gatherings) or going on what normal schools would call a "field trip" (although they do it much more often than schools do it) to see the places and meet the people who really do whatever it is. For example, the last time I visited, we went to a partially rebuilt fort and historic site/park, where they learned some history but also some physics and geometry from seeing how things there were designed for their functions. A blacksmith showed us how people back then had to start fires, and days after I was gone, they were still soaking up more stuff about fire and how people have started, maintained, fought, and used it in different eras and which technologies replaced those functions.

Of course, there's a spectrum of different levels of involvement by educational professionals, and what I've presented here are two extremes: one pretty much completely run as a private school would be except for the physical presence and one with no such people involved in it at all. But it's important not to argue for or against one thing when what you're thinking of is another.

[Parson]

Originally Posted by Teresa Edgerton

I think you can judge it if, for instance, the person grading the child's papers for spelling, grammar, etc. is extremely weak in these areas him or herself. If he or she would be unable to successfully complete a written assignment at the elementary school level. How could such a person recognize mistakes in order to correct them? (In case you think this is an exaggeration, this is one of the cases I mentioned.) What if the teacher is equally ignorant in other areas as well? You can't do a good job of teaching what you don't know.

I would largely agree with you here, however see DELVO'S post. But your last sentence is far too strong. I have two personal examples:

When I was a Junior in high school our Chemistry teacher had a heart attack and was missing for an entire quarter of the year. This was during the height of the teacher shortage in the mid-60's. There was no person qualified and/or willing to teach Chemistry in our small town school so the administration took 3 top boy students (might have been some sexism here?) and had us --- Well to be honest, two top students and myself --- teach chemistry. It actually went quite well.

Still today, I could not run a hurdle race and clear the hurdles if my life depended on it. But, I have coached state qualifying hurdle teams. If you have the ability, I could teach you how to do it. So while being able to do something is no guarantee of being able to teach it, so too, not being able to do something does not mean you could not teach it.

[Teresa Edgerton]

But Parson, I didn't say you can't teach what you can't do. I said you can't teach what you don't know. It's not the same thing.

And of course you can brush up on a particular lesson just before you teach it (as was the case, I assume, in your Chemistry class), but that would be useless if you didn't have a basic understanding of the subject.

[Parson]

Originally Posted by Teresa Edgerton

But Parson, I didn't say you can't teach what you can't do. I said you can't teach what you don't know. It's not the same thing.

And of course you can brush up on a particular lesson just before you teach it (as was the case, I assume, in your Chemistry class), but that would be useless if you didn't have a basic understanding of the subject.

Oh boy, you are so right about what you said and the example of coaching hurdlers. It is not the same thing.

As for Chemistry, we had no basic understanding of the subject,* but we were motivated to learn, and then to teach what we learned. I suppose it amounts to about the same thing. I would guess that this means that an appropriately motivated parent could learn and therefore teach what s/he does not already know or practice.

*At least no knowledge that I am aware of. I suppose we must have had some Chemistry basics in Elementary school, but we were teaching about the atomic weights of elements and the like which none of us had a clue about until we read about them.

[Teresa Edgerton]

Originally Posted by Parson

I would guess that this means that an appropriately motivated parent could learn and therefore teach what s/he does not already know or practice.

Exactly. If the qualification were somewhere between a teaching degree and nothing, many parents would already qualify, and those who didn't could refresh or add to their knowledge.

Anyway, the article isn't about your own educated and intelligent home-schooling acquaintances in Iowa, it's about the situation here in California, where the law that exists isn't being enforced, and (going by what I have seen) there doesn't seem to be an adequate system of official oversight in its place. And all I am saying is that there should be something better than what we have now -- and that something might, for all I know, be exactly what the system is in Iowa.

I'm sure there are many parents in California who are well-qualified, even without a college degree, to teach their own children. These might be the people Governor Schwarzenegger knows, and surely the advocates for home schooling will be intelligent and articulate people as well. But articles of this sort so often leave so much out, and it might be that the judge who made the ruling in question -- or at least the people who brought to his attention the fact that the law is not being enforced -- may know of cases as bad or much worse than the ones that I know.

For this reason, I think that shining a light on the subject is good. The education of our children is too important to be just handed over to anyone who says they want to do it. First, I think they should prove themselves up to the responsibility, even if they are the children's parents.

[Lith]

I've seen the spectrum of home-schooling; actually known quite a few children that were (since most home-schoolers are from religious homes, and in a small town, you get to know even the kids that aren't in school). Some of them were great, some of them... weren't. A lot of them went part-time in high school, with decidedly mixed results. One couldn't hardly read to save his life. So I've mixed feelings on the subject. And I really wonder, with some parents. If they aren't the scholastic type, I mean, really aren't, then how well can they teach their children? Of course, given how poorly some students do IN the system...

I agree with it in principle, but there do have to be some rules, and some way to make sure they're being enforced.

I knew someone that was UNschooled too; it's like a home-version of Montessori schooling (I think that's the one?)- she was quite intelligent- if she hadn't mentioned it; I never would have known.

edit: the law seems excessive though. Our state (which I'm assuming is pretty standard) requires home-schoolers to take tests every year to make sure the children actually are learning. Seems that would be the factor you would WANT to control, not the level of the parent's official education.

[Parson]

I did some quick checking on Iowa's Home Schooling laws. Of course NOW I am an expert! NOT!! But it does appear that Iowa is similar to Oregon. The state requires an annual evaluation of the student's progress by a nationally recognized test of educational development. If the student is not above the 30th percentile, or working at grade level, or has not made 6 months progress during the preceding year, then that student has to be enrolled in an accredited school, public or private, the next school year.

This seems a pretty good system to catch those who are not learning or being taught the basics of education. Better I think than simply making sure that the "teacher" is accredited.

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

Oregon tends to be pretty lax on certain things, and apparently, from what I've researched, homeschooling is one of those things. This whole thing that California's going through, though, is in my opinion nothing short of ridiculous. Education in the United States by way of public schooling is such that our children might as well be taught by chimpanzees from the San Diego zoo. Of course, I can only speak on personal experience and from what I've seen, but too many people these days are really idiots. One of my sister's co-workers, for instance, actually believes that oil is heavier than water!

And as has been mentioned above, private schools, for all their superior methods, really can wear down the wallet of some parents who want their children to be better educated. Home schooling is really the only option for some parents, so why take that away?